You Run a Values-Led Business—Can B Corp Certification Help You Prove It? - Architectural Digest

A company initiates the B Corp certification process by completing the B Impact Assessment (BIA), an extremely thorough multiple-choice questionnaire about the company’s practices and goals.

“We were just stunned by how much the B Corp certification process is truly a roadmap for companies to level up their governance, their environmental stewardship, and their community outreach,” says Whitney Frances Falk, founder and CEO of Brooklyn-based furniture startup ZZ Driggs, which is in the midst of the application process.

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For home company Avocado Green Mattress, which earned its B Corp certification in 2020, filling out the BIA was the perfect chance to better its practices and solidify its goals internally before moving forward with the rest of the application.

“When Avocado started pursuing the certification, we were in the scrappy startup phase, and the process helped us put policies in place to formalize our inclusive work environment,” says Bri Decker, the company’s director of sustainability and social impact. “We went through and did an initial evaluation and looked for areas of opportunity to increase our impact, then we set about implementing those ideas, including legally amending our operating language to consider our impact on people and the environment.”

If a company’s BIA passes muster, B Lab then moves onto verification, asking several rounds of open-ended questions to which the company must provide verbal and/or written responses. Falk calls this section “essay writing.” “I think it’s a really unifying thing for a team,” she says, noting that each member of the ZZ Driggs staff had a different research task, from determining the carbon footprint of the warehouse to investigating healthcare benefits for employees. “It just commenced a deep conversation for the whole team about our company’s goals.”

The Harper shelf by ZZ Driggs.

Photo: Courtesy ZZ Driggs

Finally, B Lab awards a number of points to the applicants based on their responses: Companies must reach at least 80 points to be awarded the B Corp certification. That score is listed publicly in the B Corp directory, along with the company’s transparency assessment. All in, the process can take anywhere from a few months to over a year, depending on how much time a company can dedicate to the application while simultaneously running the business. Plus, there’s a bit of a backlog of applicants at the moment, according to B Lab’s website, creating some delays.

The Bottom Line

It does cost money to apply for and maintain B Corp certification; the one-time submission fee is $150, while annual fees are proportionate to a company’s revenue (for example, companies with less than $150,000 in annual sales are charged $1,000, while companies with $750 million to $999.9 million in annual sales are charged $50,000). Every three years, B Corps must recertify to ensure they’re maintaining B Lab’s high standards. (Citing the resources required for benefit corporation filing, the fashion brand Reformation dropped their B Corp status in 2017.)

That considered, is the B-Corp designation all it’s cracked up to be? Avocado and The Joinery both say yes. “We pursued B Corp certification because we wanted to support a system that encourages businesses to invest in environmental and social performance,” Blumenauer says. “Externally, it sends a signal to our customers and other stakeholders that we are serious about investing in these practices. Internally, it provides a benchmark for us to track continuous improvement.”

Still, business owners have options. One parallel route to consider is becoming a public benefit corporation (PBC), a legal structural designation available in 30 states plus Washington, D.C. This status is akin to a standard C corporation, just with higher standards of accountability regarding positive impact, from environmental to social concerns. It is, however, generally more affordable than B Corp certification—depending on the state, incorporating as a PBC can cost less than $100. Or you can go all out and apply for both!

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You Run a Values-Led Business—Can B Corp Certification Help You Prove It? - Architectural Digest
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